July 18, 2014

The company’s search engine, Bing, is following Google’s lead and has now begun to take requests to eliminate search results in Europe.

Bing has released a request form for Europeans wishing to take advantage of the recent ‘right to be forgotten’ edict issued by Europe’s top court.

“If you are a European resident and want to request that Microsoft block search results on Bing in response to searches on your name, please use this form,” reads Bing’s request form page.

“We encourage you to provide complete and relevant information for each applicable question on this form. We will use the information that you provide to evaluate your request. We may also consider other sources of information beyond this form to verify or supplement the information you provide. This information will help us to consider the balance between your individual privacy interest and the public interest in protecting free expression and the free availability of information, consistent with European law. As a result, making a request does not guarantee that a particular search result will be blocked.”

The European Union Court of Justice sided with privacy advocates in late May, saying search engines must either edit or erase online search results if they are found to violate a person’s privacy.

The Court ruled that search engines such as Google and Bing are, in certain circumstances, “obliged to remove links to Web pages that are published by third parties and contain information relating to a person from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of that person’s name.”

European regulators have asked Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, along with other search engine providers in Europe, to attend a collective consultation meeting about the EU’s right to be forgotten ruling, according to IDG News.

It will be hosted by the Article 29 Working Party (A29WP), whose job it is to oversee data protection authorities across the EU. The meeting is set for next Thursday in Brussels.